AlNel in Murderland
by Crisis Project
Summary: Nel accidentally enters the bizarre world of Lewis Carroll with Alice and not all is fluff and riddles. She must protect the clueless blond from murder at the hands of the SO3 gang and the most hell-bent assassin of all: Albel, the Chesshire Cat!
1. The Chase

**AlNel in Murderland**

**Written by **Crisis Project (formerly shadevox)

**Note:** Hey guys! It's been a long time, and it's great to be back! I've been planning over the years different plots and points to return with our lovable Albel and Nel, but nothing was really the right combination to come back with. This time I'm just gonna try and see where it takes me – frankly, I'm getting tired of brainstorming over and over. So sit back, relax, and enjoy!

**Warnings: **this series will (most likely) hike from PG 13 to maybe T – we'll see how it goes.

**Disclaimer:** Star Ocean 3 belongs to Tri-Ace/Ubisoft/Square-Enix. Alice in Wonderland belongs to Lewis Carroll.

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**1: The Chase.**

If Nel Zelpher, proud Crimson Blade and one of AquariaXXVII's right-hand women, had not had the wind knocked out of her she would have done quite a number of things differently.

One – she'd be running after that flouncing, blue-skirted blondie right now and tackling her to the checkered floor so the bit of fluff could beg for her mercy.

Two – she'd be cussing. A lot.

Three – she'd be rolling over to give some reprieve to her bruised breasts. Yes, they don't hurt as much as a man's crushed nuts might, but ask any chick who's had their chest steamrollered to the floor – it _hurts_.

Four – she'd be cussing some more.

Five – she'd be breathing, and breathing's always good for a girl.

The lack of oxygen was starting to make the blurry red room spin. With gasping effort, Nel finally managed to flip onto her back; her chest heaving as her vision slowly cleared of moisture and sharpened. A question struck her in her aching state: _just why had she done that?_

An innocent wiling away of five minutes had come back to bite her hard in the rump. A minute ago she'd been in the middle of spending five minutes underneath a tree in a field to the west of castle Aquaria. Fayt and Cliff, the "engineers from Greeton", had been in the Thunder Arrow room going over the plans so as to configure the weapon to fit and stay on Crossel's back. The blue-haired beauty Maria had followed after them in the company of Mirage. Roger had disappeared along with Albel Nox. The last two she wouldn't begrudge for vanishing.

Nel had already finished all her own duties and had decided to take a few minutes to herself upon returning and seeing the Black Brigade General prowling around the stuffy room, wearing dents into the plush green carpet with his pointy iron shoes. She'd reasoned that she'd be back in ten minutes, tops – the field was only two minutes away from the castle at a run. Nobody would be there because it had been the grounds which the runological team had tested the capabilities of the Thunder Arrow, as such rendering the ground with deep and dangerous ditches.

So she'd been comfortably gazing over the swishing sea of green grass occasionally punctured by upturned pungent reddish-brown soil when a rustling to her right had caused her to grab her daggers just as a small white cannonball hurtled out onto the dirt path.

"-gonna have my _head_! And I've only started this job a week ago! Craaaap -"

Vanilla's long feet were a blur as he ran toward and past her, muttering under his breath as he glanced from the huge pocket watch in one paw and the ground.

"-so cute! It looks so soft too - oh Mister Rabbit!!"

Close on his heels was a short girl, probably in her early teens or younger. Nel only had a vague impression of mid-length, fluffy blonde hair, an old-fashioned blue skirt with a white apron flapping over it and black shoes when she'd realized that _they were heading towards one of the deepest ditches in the field._

In stepped Nel's ingrained sense of honour and duty, with a little helping of conscience. Chasing the girl down hadn't been a problem – it'd been trying to haul the girl up with one hand as she'd already been falling into the ditch was where the first complication lay. Looking back, the first real complication had been something else entirely.

And it was only as Nel lay on her back looking up at the hole they'd fallen through that she realized that the stupid girl had _deliberately_ jumped in after the rabbit. But then, knowing herself, she'd probably have gone after the girl anyway. And for all her good intentions, she'd been used as a safety cushion. Undoubtedly she'd have a butt-shaped bruise on her back in the morning. A little thanks would be appreciated, but the chit had up and skipped off after Vanilla (who also, she realized, had ignored her completely).

Now, normally she was very cool and patient. But everyone has their own little buttons, and being stomped on by someone's butt and left in the middle of nowhere by the butt-er and an acquaintance without so much as a word of gratitude was one of hers.

Carefully Nel brought herself up and winced as she gently touched her back with examining fingers. The muscle was tender, but otherwise nothing seemed broken. Which was weird, she realized as she cast a glance up the hole. She should've broken a few somethings from the huge drop – the opening to the ditch was only a pinprick of light in the gradating shadows collected above her. The light grazed and outlined other somethings which she refused to remember as bits of strange and lethal furniture swirling around in mid-air which were a constant danger as she whooshed by them and had to somehow dodge them as she did.

Deciding to take her time surveying her surroundings (the chit could whine for help if she found any trouble for a little bit), Nel made sure she was alone before perusing the most bizarre circular red room she'd ever been in. The floor was comprised of polished black and white tiles, the walls stacked with red bricks. On her right was an upside-down fireplace, merrily crackling an upside-down fire. There was a leaky faucet sticking out from the ceiling, dripping water onto a painting of a sink on the floor to her left. Random items hung on the walls like trophies – a foot to the faucet's right she saw a blue pointy had with stars embroidered onto it. A little higher above that was a golden scarab, glittering in a candle's light as it flickered. She noted a crimson apple, a softly glowing golden shell on a black leather thong, a spindle, a lion skin rug, a glass slipper without its partner, a huge pumpkin, a sword lodged into a slab of stone, a wooden puppet of a boy with an elongated nose, a stuffed deer, and so on until they faded into the shadows above.

What the _hell_ was a room with a fireplace doing down here underneath a field? Shouldn't there have been some kind of marker, like a chimney so they'd know someone was living here? Or a door? Maybe it was Vanilla's house...? But no, he lived in the Urssa Lava Caves, or so he'd claimed when they'd visited. And yet Vanilla had definitely jumped suicidally into this hole as well.

At any rate, _someone_ lived down here, and they'd been in grave danger when they'd tested out the Thunder Arrow in the field the home was under. The roof could have caved in, with nobody the wiser. But when Nel and her team had scouted the field before the weapon had been tested nothing had turned up. No welcome mat, not even a hint of a doorknob, no marking of a dwelling of any kind.

Nel puzzled over the situation a bit more before deciding to put it aside until she could meet with the queen. First she had to get out of here. And it stood to reason that there should be a door around here _somewhere_. Nel had a sudden thought – if someone like Vanilla, a rabbit relative, lived down here, they may have fashioned the home into a series of burrows like a real rabbit or rodent home. _Wonderful._

But the fastest way from one point to another was a straight line. Nel eyed the objects and picked out hand and foot holds before rubbing her hands and checking if her daggers were secure. Stepping slightly beneath the spindle, Nel leapt and grasped a good hold on the wooden beam – until she fell back to the tiles with a thump, spindle and all. Besides the pain in her butt (and her back again), she gasped – she'd just torn a decoration from the wall! "Shit," muttered the crimson-haired woman, "sorry Vanilla." She was just setting it aside beside her when, before her very eyes, the wooden spindle floated back up to its original position and hovered there.

There are several approaches to suspected insanity, the most common being flat-out denial. She'd seen too many unbelievable things in her life to deny anything outright. Ignoring it wouldn't help her situation either. Tentatively, Nel got back up and eyed the wall décor. The glittering silver stars on the blue hat beckoned, and she grabbed the soft hat. This time when she let go it just fell to the floor with a soft fwump of air.

She stared. Of course it would fall to the floor. There was the law of gravity to consider, after all. Shaking her head, Nel picked it back up and stuffed an arm through the brim to straighten up the pointed tip.

Suddenly she wasn't so sure she wasn't in a dream. Holding in her breath, Nel wiggled her fingers. Nothing happened inside the sagging blue hat. Cautiously, she stretched a bit more of her arm into the hat until she had the brim of the hat sitting on her shoulder, with no corresponding action happening inside the blue felt hat. The empty air in front of the hat should have been interrupted by her arm, which should have ripped through the hat at this length; instead there was nothing, just a phantom limb wiggling underneath the warm felt. Was this what Albel's rumoured decapitated arm might look like...?

Just when she was about to wrench the hat off of her invisible limb, her fingers collided with something. Eyeing the hat apprehensively, she wrapped her hand around a cold metal circle and pulled.

"Eugh-!"

It was only a split second later, when she'd pulled out and dropped the dehydrated and withered blue hands manacled by golden cuffs, that she realized that her common sense had fled her. Or rather, it didn't work in such dream-like settings as these. Normally she wouldn't have pulled something out blindly without knowing what it was.

Looking down with distaste at the butchered hands, she distantly noted how they appeared to be very old from the condition of the skin and the length of the gnarled yellow fingernails. It may have been preserved in some type of liquid, which would explain the blue hue to the leathery skin. The golden cuffs gleamed brightly in contrast against the aged skin, looking to be kept in good condition.

Shouting drifted to her ears from the hallway behind her. Obviously there was no way to use the wall décor as handholds to return to the field above her, and there was nothing left to do here. Nel quickly stuffed the hands back inside the hat, noting how it didn't get any heavier or bigger. On a second thought, she yanked down the apple and the glowing golden shell and stuffed them inside as well before she turned on her heel and left. No telling how long it would be until she found some form of staircase to escape out of this strange place.

The hallway was short, the door at the end of it unlocked. The blond girl was standing inside, gabbing away to the door at the far end of the square room. The ceiling was obscured by darkness; the only light shed in the room came from the few candles hovering by the walls.

"But you simply _must _see that I _have_ to get through! I must follow – "

"Yes, yes, I know, the white rabbit. Do you realize that you have stalker-like tendencies?" replied a chirpy voice, a contrast to the sarcastic words it uttered.

Nel peered around the girl to see a painting fixed onto the small door in the wall. The door was no taller than Nel's knee – there was no way she was getting through, or the girl. Vanilla was possible, if he'd curled up and squeezed through.

Then she focused on the painting. "_Welch_?" Nel stared at the pig-tailed mediator of the Inventor's Guild. "What are you doing here?"

Welch held up both hands, but the girl interrupted before Welch could reply. "Excuse me, ma'am, but could you convince her to open the door? It's just that I'm following this white rabbit you see, and I saw him go through, and I simply _must_ follow him!"

Nel stared. "Why?" Not that Nel wasn't planning the same thing, but she was following him because he may know how to get out of here. Plus, she wasn't about to try anything for the idiot who had landed on her back and skipped away without a word of apology. _And she'd called me "ma'am" as if I were some middle-aged woman_.

The blond blinked huge guileless blue eyes framed by thick black lashes. "Curiosity, I suppose."

Nel's temper started to chafe. What an ignorant answer. Was she saying that she'd ran after Vanilla through the field and jumped into the ditch and fallen through a huge distance of space only because she'd been _curious_?

"You know what, fine," snapped Welch. "Just take that and leave me alone. _Why_ I always get selfish, yapping customers and guests is beyond me -"

Between their feet appeared with a cloudy _poof_ a small glass bottle with a tag saying "Drink Me."

Before Nel could inspect it for its effects, the girl swiped it from her hand and took a huge swig from it, then let go of the bottle. Nel's hand automatically caught it in mid-air as the girl fell to the floor. No, she hadn't fallen – she'd _shrunk_ with a speed which would make those Vendeeni ships envious.

She was now a bit of blond dust against the black tile she was standing on in front of the door, and from her miniature expression she was in a bout of miniature ecstasy. Scooting up to the painting, the girl exclaimed, "now I'm just the right size! Won't you please let me through?"

Welch just looked down her nose at their considerable height difference. Alice was too small to even reach the doorknob on the tips of her toes.

Nel peered at the glass bottle. There was just enough left for a small sip. If shrinking was the only effect to the liquid, she'd take it. She too had to get through the door to pursue Vanilla. Gripping the hat in one hand and the bottle in the other, she tossed it back and immediately fell to the floor, blinking and discovering that she was now level with Welch in the painting. The girl stood up to just below her knee.

"Now we're both small enough to go through," Nel pointed out to the irate girl in the picture frame. But when she turned the knob, she was brought up short by a click – it was locked.

"Oh, I should've told you, but you won't be able to get through even if you're small enough to fit," Welch said blithely, the warning _way_ too late. "The key's up there."

A glass table whirled out of the darkness and landed silently on the tiles as Nel and the girl turned. A golden key winked into existence atop the transparent table ledge.

The girl started to dash toward one of the glass table feet and tried to climb up the slippery surface before Nel turned away and slipped free the daggers slung on her waist. The gleaming steel point with an undertone rippling of blue stopped just short of touching the painted canvas. "Now," Nel said in an agreeable tone, "shouldn't you have told us that there was a key before you gave us the shrinking solution?"

Welch sidled to the side, trying to evade the point of Nel's dagger. "Uh, you know, I can fix that. It's over there," Welch pointed, all irritation gone at the sight of the dagger in such close proximity. "But I should warn you – you really shouldn't go in. there's no guarantee that you'd get back out, and there're all kinds of things behind me that you really don't want to meet. Especially the cat."

At this point Nel was ignoring her as she stared down at the box titled "Super Size Me" beside her feet. Lifting the blue lid, dainty little tea biscuits spilled out and landed on the floor. A pair of tiny white hands shot out and lifted one. The girl was biting into it before Nel could say anything _again_. Nel narrowed her eyes as she watched the impulsive blond gobble it up – she'd watch her for the effects this time as well.

"Holy Mother of Apris -!" Nel scooted back as far as she could as the girl started shooting up and out. Her gleaming black shoe loomed larger and larger menacingly as it boxed her into a corner and she had a split second to decide if she really wanted to become a piece of gum squished onto the bottom of the blonde's shoe before she leapt toward the heel and hoisted herself up and over so she landed on the top of the girl's white-socked ankle.

She really had no idea how the girl came to be crying. She only heard a few muffled sniffles before the giantess' blue eyes cracked open and a flood poured out. Deafening hiccups rent through the air like thunder as waves crashed and soaked into the white sock Nel was standing on. The level of the water soon climbed up and started lapping at Nel's own ankles and she had to get to higher ground and quickly, and that was only if she managed to dodge all the teardrops zooming down on her, the size of boulders. How does a girl stock up enough water to start flooding a room?

A shout reached her through the din and Nel hazarded a quick glance in its direction. Welch was spazzing out in her frame as the waves of water lapped at the bottom of the painting, washing away Welch's knees. The painted girl pointed at the doorknob and looked to be ranting at it when the keyhole responded – it looked to be yawning open – when Nel was hit from behind, engulfed into a teardrop sac of water and washed into the raging ocean, sucked through the keyhole and swept into the dark.

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**A/n:** Still working on the style of the narration, but I hope to inject more life and humour into it. It's just that I wanted to pump out this chapter so I can actually get motivated to keep writing the story.

Sorry that Albel hasn't made his appearance yet, but he'll be here next chapter!

Reviews are my fuel. Please donate!


	2. The Carcass Race?

**[AlNel in Murderland] [Act II]**

**Written by** Crisis Project [formerly shade_vox]

**Note: **wonder if I should continue this at all. Oh well. Here it is.

**Warning:** possible OOC, possible future crossover (which will remain nameless), swearing, mature language, possible 'mature' subjects. All kids are invited to go home. Love ya.

**Disclaimer:** Star Ocean 3 belongs to Tri-Ace/Ubisoft/Square-Enix, Alice in Wonderland belongs to Lewis Carroll.

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**Act II:** Caucas-race vs. Carcass race

Not for the first time, Nel's lungs were having a rough time against gravity, and thus, Nel was short on air. Again. Distantly, she suspected a habit beginning to form.

In another dream, she'd be relaxed on the grimy beach she was plastered on. She'd be naked, except for the pretty bikini which would prevent said dressing state from occurring, perhaps with the aid of a fluffy towel. Sunlight would be harmonizing with her skin, concocting vitamin D in her skin lightly basted in oil. Some gorgeous rippling hunk might be helping out with a massage (and maybe other favours).

Subconscious mental calculation in Nel's medulla oblongata results in this:

(Gorgeous hunk + massage + vacation) x Nel = 0.0000000000001(?)

If it wasn't aliens from outer space, then reality dished her something just as absurd – like that fish with flailing feet flopping on the sand a yard to her right. Flailing because it had the misfortune to have severed Achilles tendons, which was the result in having the misfortune to have stepped on Nel's diaphragm as it had run along the beach. Such consequences were inescapable, even in dream worlds.

But there was one solid fact: she had been awakened (albeit rudely) from sleep, and she was still in the dream world. It was the only thing she could think of to call it, because she remembered all too perfectly how she'd gotten to be plastered, shivering, to this grimy beach. That blonde's tears had formed a flood in that room where they'd tried to get through the locked door to follow Vanilla, then the doorknob had yawned wide and swallowed all the water to drain it at the painted washable-Welch's command.

She'd been swept away, struggling to keep her head above the salty water line as the tunnel through the doorknob had gradually lightened and became a grey, cloudy sky while the water churned below like a great sea. Her daggers and magician's hat were dragging at her belt, she'd almost had to chuck the shoes until a bird had floated by on _another_ bird, paddling along like it were a canoe.

She'd managed a weak "Hey!" before a wave had tumbled her into the cold wet darkness. A glimpse of the underside of the bird guided her as she'd struck out and emerged on the side of the bird-boat. There had been no time to think; she hoisted herself up while the birds squawked indignantly and laid her dagger none too gently against the paddling bird's bill until they'd started chirping rather nervously with frequent back glances.

A glimpse of the beach and encroaching forest had been all she had managed before a glass bottle containing the blonde had caught up with them. Upon recognition – Nel's in disappointment and the blonde's in enthusiasm – the blonde had lurched up and beaten against the glass, obviously yelling for help. The rim of the bottle had swooped down as it tipped and there'd been a colossal _crack_, a flash of pain. Then she'd woken up with a goose egg on her forehead, the dagger in her hand, a constricted diaphragm, an absent hunk, and the bleeding no-longer-running fish on the beach.

And she'd thought Albel had needed help.

Blinking stinging eyes, she grimaced and carefully rolled to her side and spat out the salty water sloshing around in her mouth and shivered. The wind caressed icy fingers through her wet clothes and cut at her exposed skin. The beach stretched out, dotted with granite boulders thrusting up from the lurching waves of the steel ocean reflecting the steel sky.

The _ocean_.

Apris, not only was she in a world of dreams, but she was in a world full of crap.

How in Apris' name (if Apris was even around in this land) was she going to get back to the field now? She was separated from it by an ocean with no land in sight on the other side, a twisting corridor of strange objects and questionable rules of physics, and a fathoms-deep hole with absolutely no handholds.

If the fish with the feet weren't still laying there (giving her an aggrieved, watery glare over it's flapping gills), bleeding from its finny feet clad in a pair of wooden clogs, she might have guessed the beach to be one which surrounded the northern hemisphere of Gaitt. As such, those finny feet destroyed any hope. There were no such creatures as feet attached to fish in Elicoor.

A spark caught her eye past the baleful glare of the lipless tuna. Against the drab brown and grey light filtering through thin spots of clouds above, the bonfire blazing several yards from her was bright enough, and definitely looked warm enough. Blurry shadows were circling it, hopping from rock to boulder, then sand when there were no stony footholds close enough.

Nel sat fully upright and rubbed her eyes to encourage her tears to wash out the grimy saltwater, then shook her head, flinging the wet out of her hair. Something slimy hit her earlobe. Wincing at the feel, she dragged a piece of seaweed out of her ear.

"-now how am I to run the Caucus-race?!" squawked the Tuna, baring needle-sharp teeth.

Nel nearly jumped even as she met the market-deli-thing's round, flat eye. Its voice was jarringly loud in the right side of her head; her left was quite deaf.

"…The carcass-race?" Nel repeated quizzically.

"The _Caucas_-race, you _jabberwocky_!" the tuna spat emphatically. "I'm late as it is already and you have the gall to _cut_ my feet off?!"

His finny feet really were too bedraggled now to be described as more than shredded ribbons. But maybe if she used her runes…

"I can heal that," she muttered through chattering teeth, and knelt beside the fish careful to inhale shallowly through her mouth – a fish with feet still attained that fishy smell. "What's this Caucas-race about?" she asked, hoping to divert her attention from the stench.

"Racing," the tuna responded sardonically. She halted her gleaming hand just before his fins and gave it a look. "There is no beginning or end. Sir Dodo announces when it's finished, so I had a shot at getting in and maybe winning the prize that the girl has."

_Girl? The blonde didn't look like she had much on her_, Nel mused as the fins threaded together slowly beneath her fingers. She'd have to wash them in that chilly ocean later and maybe even boil them to get the smell off her skin.

"Stop!" called a distant voice.

"Great, now they're finished," Fishy Tuna grumbled as he slowly got up and stepped into his clogs again, straightening his black blazer. "That was the Dodo just now."

Nel scowled and crossed her arms against the chill. "If you go now maybe they won't notice that you didn't run the race and still get a prize."

Fishy Tuna's lipless mouth jerked up at the corners, giving her a toothy grin and took off trotting without a word of thanks. In the distance she could just make out a slip of a girl in a blue dress and blonde hair blazing in the firelight, digging through her apron pocket.

Nel sighed and started trudging along down the beach toward the crowd while wringing out what parts of her clothes she could reach, along with the felt hat stuffed into her belt. That girl had gotten her here, it stood to reason that the girl probably knew where she was - seeing as she was comfortable with the dancing fish and birds. They may even be her friends. Nel would have to interrogate her, find out her location and if they were still on Elicoor or confirm her fears and she was on some other planet, then determine the fastest possible route to return home.

"-not enough!"

"-cheat us out! We won the race!"

"Technically speaking, we _all_ won-"

"Either way there isn't enough to go around!"

The mob was becoming more raucous with every passing second, and Nel could just make out Alice squealing in the middle as they all turned on her, trying to climb up and over each other in their quest to obtain more.

"Please! Wait! I have…" the girl seemed to rummage through her pocket as Nel drew a little closer to the mob. "…This! Catch!" every eye turned to look up as the shiny object flew out of her dainty little fist and sailed over the crowd.

"Gimmie the-"

"Mine!"

"-SPARKLY!"

The mob seemed to surge to the left and out of the middle, from between two squished salmon popped out the blonde who fell promptly onto the sand before looking back, catching the eyes of several crabs at the back of the crowd, and lurched back onto her feet and ran toward Nel waving her arms furiously.

_Damn, if she thinks I'm going to_-

"Help me!" Blondie shrieked as the crabs started scuttling after her, complete with snapping pincers.

Nel darted a glance from the girl to the forest twenty yards or so away from roughly where they were on the beach. The noisy mob seemed to hear Blondie's plea for help and swelled with the effort to turn around.

And in the next second it clicked: the mob was _actually swelling_. To be more precise, a few of the ocean and sky citizens were shooting up at an alarming speed, becoming black cut-out silhouettes against the grey clouds overhead.

"_What_ did you give them?" Nel shouted as she turned to run alongside the girl.

"Just – the – biscuits – from – the – painted – la-lady!" Blondie panted.

"The ones that said _Supersize me_?!"

"…Ye-ow!"

Nel wheeled around and almost bit her tongue. The girl had succumbed to the most common escaping female inhibitor: the twisted ankle. She was clutching her right on the beach as the mob started to catch up – and those fifteen foot goldfish only needed a few more steps to be in range to squish the chit.

And if that weren't enough incentive to get Nel to stay and fight to defend the girl, there was a black cat canoodling out from behind a rock up toward her.

"No! Stay away!" Blondie screeched as she twisted from her seat and finally saw how close her 'friends' were from roasting her on a spit, if what Nel heard from her right ear was correct.

She was already dashing towards the girl but seemingly in terror the blonde snaked out a hand and flung the yowling cat into the mass of scales and feathers over her head as she ducked and screamed, all at the same time.

Sometimes Nel wished it'd be easier to hang up her conscience as easily as it was to hang up her daggers.

* * *

The clouds had finally broken and revealed the late sun by the time Nel had won the battle. Ducks, turkeys, parrots, lobsters, crabs, and even the tuna were slain around her with her in the eye of the storm. She'd had to stay put beside the wounded tween and fight radiating outwards from that central point, and the opponents just crawled over the fallen to get to her resulting in the heaving walls of exposed avian meat and seafood surrounding her. Looking up at the circle of blue sky above her, Nel had the sensation of being marooned at the bottom of an empty well.

It was also quite peaceful because the girl had somehow managed to slip away on that hobbled ankle.

"Hey, girl!" she croaked wearily. The saltwater from her swim had left her throat raw, while the massacre which had followed had her bone-weary.

Sweat trickled from Nel's temple as the steam and pungent scent of such a rich buffet wafted into her nostrils, tempting her to coax her pressed muscles into carving out some dark meat from that pheasant in front of her, and maybe collect some grapefruit-sized eggs from the giant, unmoving female crab on her left.

A black cat paw stuck out from the sand by her foot.

The Caucus-race had indeed ended in a carcass-race.

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**Crisis:** so yeah, I finally got around to writing the second chapter. Any thoughts? Please review and let me know what's awesome and what I need work on!

On a different note, if anyone would like to beta for me please send me a pm! I'm looking for a competent beta and as such I will be looking over your stories to get a feel for your skills and style. I'm looking forward to conversing with someone about my ideas and working it out together (I love communication). Thanks!


	3. Going Vegan

**AlNel in Murderland**

**Written by **Crisis Project

**Note:** IT'S ALIIIIIIIIVE!

**Warnings:** blood, violence, unabashed carnivorous activities.

**Disclaimer:** Star Ocean 3 belongs to Tri-Ace/Ubisoft/Square-Enix. Alice in Wonderland belongs to Lewis Carroll.

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**The Pros of Going Veg****a****n**

_Whack – crab shell - squelch – fish eye – flump – bird wing – pop – crab eggs – bff!_

Stars whipped through the backs of her closed eyes as the impact from hitting the beach on her shoulder and ribs made Nel groan. Peering blearily through clumped strands of her crimson hair almost set on fire by the sunset's rays, she looked around and carefully unravelled herself from the hedgehog imitation she'd been doing on the way down the tower of seafood.

"Blondie?"

The croak would have made an adolescent toad proud. As it was, she could hardly hear herself over the crash of the molten ocean surf. She'd thought she'd seen a bit of the brat's blue dress in one of the trenches, sticking out like a sore thumb among all the blood.

Tired as she was, Nel would have to take the girl home with her. While she'd been climbing the inside of the Seafood Tower (multiple times, as gizzards and entrails didn't make the best footholds, as she'd discovered), she'd debated about just leaving the walking blonde catastrophe here. Let her stew in her own mess, as she so clearly desired to. Surely Nel would be in grave danger if she hung around such a tactless brat much longer.

A frown tugged at her lips (or perhaps just gravity, she was having such a tough time fighting it) as she remembered how firmly her conscience had resisted that idea. Hanging around Fayt the Boy Wonder had sanded down her habits of war and demanded kindness be her first tactic. If that failed, then all else was fair. Including abandonment.

"Blondie!"

"Manemishashish!"

The answering call was faint, but had been carried on the chilly breeze over the eye-level heaps of meat chowder. Eyeing the sun as it dipped lower and lower, Nel briskly set off, trying to rub herself warm with muscles made of limp seaweed and chattering teeth.

A right at the legless emu, over the glassy-eyed sardines, another right at the torn left half of a gigantic goldfish, and the center path in the cross between the shrivelled octopi led her straight to Blondie.

As she'd gotten closer, a strange, indecently loud and over-enthusiastic slurping had increased in volume. As Nel approached the squatting girl (with her white pantaloons for everyone to see) she could see that the slurping was in fact issuing from between the girl's pretty little rosebud lips as she sucked the tender white meat from a crab leg like a professional noodle-slurper from China.

"What?" Nel croaked coldly, fingering her dagger handles.

Having caught sight of Nel, Blondie swallowed and burped, then smiled. "My name is Alice Liddell. Not 'Blondie,' though I must say I do think it's a cute nickname. Can I call you Pinky?"

"No. And what were you thinking?" Nel croaked with forced calm. The tip of her dagger flashed in the weakening sunlight, glimmering just a few inches from the button nose of the girl (a little extra authority never hurts). Her hand was trembling though, a result from the combination of the raw stench of meat and tang of blood affronting her nostrils and sheer exhaustion. The squelching, sucking noises did nothing to ease her comfort.

"About what?" Alice asked, peering up at the taller woman from underneath her ruffled blond hair. Nel noticed distantly with disgust that bits of meat were sticking out from her pearly white children's teeth, and juice and blood were dribbling down her chin to spot her white apron. Discarded bones stripped clean of meat were scattered around her black heels.

"Why were you frolicking with those crazy sea creatures? What in Apris's name were you doing?"

A high-pitched chitter distracted her from the beginning of her rant and she zipped her eyes to where the source of the noise came from. A line of baby crabs were streaming down from the gaping belly of their giantess mother, which meant that they each in turn were the size of a small dog. A tug on her hand startled Nel into letting go of her blade after a split second of debate – Alice didn't seem able to comprehend that if she tugged any harder, she'd get cut while holding the blade-end of the dagger.

"_Eeheehaha_!"

And yet another split second later, Nel knew she had made the wrong choice.

With an ear-splitting shriek of glee, the blonde savage launched herself onto the straggler of the line of baby crabs and proceeded to merrily beat its head into the sand before Nel could lift a finger. The others kicked up their speed a knot to the pounding surf while their sibling was coldly reduced to catatonic twitching. _What happened to her sprained ankle?_ Nel wondered faintly. Then she started debating about the pros of going vegetarian, or even vegan. And for a woman who enjoyed her protein, that was saying something in light of the scene before her.

"You see," Alice said after she'd swallowed her first bite of tender crab-brain, "the mouse was telling me about the Caucas-race and that _everyone_ got a prize if they raced in it. The Dodo was kind enough to volunteer and be the judge, and held one in my honour because I'd never been in a Caucas-race before. It was so exciting! The most fun since I left my governess!" She pried off a piece of the crab's back shell and poked through the meat with the dagger tip, searching for choice bits. "Then they told me that since I was new, _I_ had to give them prizes!" she huffed, flinging her knotted, spun-gold hair out of her face, getting bits of her most recent victim in it.

"So you decided to give them the _Supersize-Me_ cookies which you _knew_ would make them bigger," Nel deadpanned, easing down to sit on a boulder nearby. As often as she had battled, it wasn't her custom to sit on her slain opponents. Besides, they were probably still body-temperature, and feeling their residual life force sapping away underneath her tush would creep her out like no one's business.

Alice shrugged a slender shoulder. "They were all I had ma'am."

"Do _not_ ma'am me," Nel admonished. The bit of (insanely savage) fluff had to be eleven or twelve, give or take a year. Definitely not old or young enough to start _ma'aming_ her. "You said you've left your governess?"

Alice nodded, drops from her chin scattering down her chest and creating bulls-eyes on her frilly apron. "We were going over my lessons by the prettiest apple tree in the garden, when I saw the white rabbit. I wasn't going to stay, not when she was reading from a book with no pictures in it! And he was wearing a tweed vest!"

"And that's all the reasoning you needed to leave your teacher and chase the poor creature down into that fathoms-deep pit," Nel said sarcastically, watching her suck out the crab's eyes through her puckered lips like tapioca. "You could have died, or seriously injured yourself. Didn't your governess or your parents teach you to never follow strangers, or play in dangerous areas?"

"Yes, but the white rabbit had a watch, and he kept saying he was late for something! I'd never met a talking rabbit before – not even my kitty, Diana, talks to me!" Alice exclaimed, licking her fingers.

"You have a cat, and you still threw that black cat at the mob earlier," Nel muttered, swiping sand off of her skin and wringing bits of her clothing free of saltwater.

"Oh no," Alice objected, her cerulean eyes wide and the roasted duckling she'd started on forgotten in her lap, "I threw a little man. I thought he could help me, see, since he said he could!"

Nel stared. "No," she said slowly, "that was a black cat. You threw it just after you twisted your ankle."

"It was a little man, with black and yellow hair," Alice said defiantly.

The little girl promptly returned to her gorging as Nel sat on the boulder, shivering from the cold and wondering if Alice were crazy. Or mentally subnormal. Like one of those homeless vagrants who wander through various cities garbling at the air or their bottles wrapped in brown paper bags with conviction.

"Do you know where we are, then?" Nel asked, with a faint air of grasping at straws.

"We're in the White Rabbit's world," Alice said matter-of-factly, flossing bits of downy duckling feathers from her teeth with a loose thread. She looked rather like a cat wiping its dinner satisfyingly off with her paws. "We need to get a move on if we're to find him again."

"We are _not_ chasing after Vanilla –" _you gluttonous carnivore_, "-because we have to find out where we are and how we're going to get back," Nel said firmly.

Alice stood up and a cascade of bones and bits of shell hit the sand by her black heels. "I don't want vanilla, I want to know where the White Rabbit is going. And no one's around here. We're not going to find answers by staying here, so we might as well explore the forest."

The older woman carefully chewed on her lip as she debated. The looming storm was approaching, the sun was setting and consequently so was the temperature, and there was no one else in sight. The forest _would_ offer some protection from the weather and they could find firewood there. They could even prop a large bit of giant crab shell as a lean-to and stuff their clothes full of feathers for extra warmth, so long as they kept close to the murder scene. In the morning they could set off to gather information on where they were and how to get back home.

"Alright, we'll pitch camp in the forest edge," Nel consented, easing up on her creaking feet. "We'll be spending the night here, since night's setting fast. If you listen to my instructions we'll be warm in a trice, understood?"

After the girl had bowed to her authority and returned her dagger, they had set about finding and plucking birds naked, Nel feeling like a grave robber. The soft downy feathers were stuffed unceremoniously up shirts, shoved into each bra cup, shoes, and even their underwear until they were padded like fencing dummies. They also carried a hollowed-out shell to lean against a tree with a dense canopy to ward off the drizzle.

"Remember, don't go too far and only get _dry_ branches for the fire – the wet ones won't catch," called Nel after Alice's retreating back, vanishing into the shadows stretched between the trunks of the trees.

Nel herself turned in the opposite direction and walked the short distance to the beach, illuminated faintly by the last vestigial rays of the sun as it drowned gracefully into the swelling water.

Hunger wrung her belly and the thirst was causing her a headache. Reluctantly, Nel started chewing on a duck wing as she carved strips of meat from a jawless tuna fish, stowing it in Alice's apron to be smoked and preserved for later rations.

Grimly she worked, losing herself in eating and tearing, slowly warming up. Crabs, fish, jellyfish, birds of different feathers steadily drifted before her eyes as she collected their meals for the next couple days. No knowing how much they'd need, but hopefully not for long. Remembering the black cat's paw which had been by her foot in the Seafood Tower, she shuddered and hoped that the rest of the black cat wouldn't cross her vision.

She'd been picking through the meat for a while when she glimpsed some movement out of the corner of her eye. Whipping her head around and gripping her daggers, she stood silently as a dark figure stumbled out of the waves and drunkenly wove up the beach, farther away from her.

_Is it another fish? _She wondered. Gently laying down the bulging apron onto the sand, she raised her free hand and muttered the incantation for fire.

The orange flame streaked from her extended fingers to land a yard to the left of the figure. It flared before smudging itself out in the sand, but not before it had cast the figure in stark relief.

Even at this distance, the pale, carved face of Albel the Wicked frozen in a bared snarl burned itself into her retinas. Lanks of his wet hair matted his face, the details of his clothing lost as her eyes drifted to where his right hand was clutching – the mangled remains of his left arm, a raw and bleeding stump severed just below the shoulder.

The moment was broken when the light flared out and died, though it took another moment for Nel to unfreeze.

"Wai – Nox? _Albel_! _**Albel**_?"

She broke off at a run, apron and meat forgotten as she ran and leapt over corpses, temporarily and ironically blinded by her bit of light. By the time she'd huffed over to the approximate spot where the fire had committed suicide, he'd gone.

Summoning back the fire, but commanding it to sit in her palm this time, Nel looked around as sweat dripped down uncomfortably from her temples to below her neckline, acting as a glue for the itchy feathers to stick to her overheated skin. Footsteps in the sand, definitely larger than hers, ended just a foot beside the hull of a giant sea snail.

"Albel?" She called, now starting to doubt herself. His name hung as a foggy breath in front of her before it, too, faded away like her certainty.

Nothing answered. All she saw were the glinting red eyes of a black cat as it looked over its shoulder at her before limping away into the dark.

* * *

Yes, this story is somewhat still alive. Call it in a state of undecided comatose (coma? Is that right?), if you will. It occasionally sleepwalks and raids your fridge when you least expect it. What does it eat? Your reviews! FEED THE BEAST!


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